~Sub-Event~
On the seventh floor, a sub event of the Christmas event had spawned. Search for and hunt down a unique boss monster in a forest on the floor. The quest reward was, if defeated by an individual, add a thousand presents to their count. If defeated by a group, split fifteen hundred presents between all members of the group. Because of this, most of Beta gathered together and searched the floor relentlessly for the monster. After all, it was a time limited quest.
They almost forgot to even eat their lunch on their second day on the seventh floor, because of their relentless search for the event boss monster. They could always think that there might be more, and there might even have already been some of those on the previous floors involved in the event, there could even be more chances on higher floors, but they were determined. The competitive sides of most of the group shone.
As far as Ana and Anabelle, they had some interest in fighting it, but the competitive spirit was lost on them. For Ana, her lack of competitive spirit was an accumulation of many competitive events ending in sour moods because she had participated. Because she either won to the point that the other competitors couldn't stand a chance, or she lost so blatantly that others wanted a rematch with her true potential. Humans were so competitive in nature, that she had arrived at a point long ago that no matter how much she didn't care about winning or losing something like a competitive game, other people would be upset for any number of excuses and she just wouldn't feel the sense of having accomplished anything. Even with archery, she didn't compete. She only participated in the club and used it as a hobby. Otherwise, Ana had been happy enough being secluded from other people and their nonsense drama. Honestly, she didn't like people for the most part. She had been lucky and found good people inside of Aincrad, and she was able to form a like-minded group. She couldn't sway them of course from their competitive nature, so they were out enjoying their hunt of the giant mutant thief.
For Anabelle, Ana had discovered that she had plenty the same experience competing with others, and it wasn't any fun thinking about how other people would be upset with her whether she won or lost. Either way, she still wasn't ready for fighting something like that. While Ana and Anabelle hung back around the town of the seventh floor, they picked off enemies with their bows, gathering some presents here and there. Confirming Anabelle's ability with the bow, and just spending some quality bonding time together. Anabelle would receive praise for impressive shots, and she would be impressed by how consistent her blind mother was in hitting the weak points of the monsters.
On the seventh floor, came a new monster type. Human monsters. They were basically just any random monster from other game perspectives, just giving them a kind of role which the players could control. However, seeing these monsters for the first time from the perspective of the others in the guild, it was difficult looking at them and attacking them. Even if they saw the blatant monster tags over their heads, even if they looked more monster than human, it was difficult for them to fight a human shaped monster. It only proved that they were good people, and completely unlike those who were true monsters in real life. Those relentless murderers of Laughing Coffin.
Still no news had come up from below, no word on Laughing Coffin having emerged from the under dungeon. Many names from those who had been sent to the prison had been crossed off on the name mural in the Town of Beginnings, the normal entrance to the under dungeon. PoH was still on the list. Some other notable names were still on the list. Those people, Ana assumed were smart enough to hold back and try to regain their full control of their bodies after the limbs had been replaced by the system. Those people, were the ones to worry about. People who would definitely do their best to return from the under dungeon and create heaps of messes for the people who put them into the prison.
The thing about the prison and the criminals, those who have a permanent orange marker from killing or assisting in killing another person within the game, those people would still be easily sent back to the prison if someone with a prison transport crystal like Ana had activated the use and sent them back. It would be a nightmare for those who weren't committed to a life of crime.
The prison did serve free bread to the prisoners so that they could suffer off of the stale horrible taste. It kept them alive, at least. They could stay there indefinitely until the game were cleared, so there was no issue in leaving the prisoners where they were. Letting them escape and cause trouble again was definitely not something that could be allowed.
Anabelle and Ana had no issue firing their arrows at the human type monsters. For them, thankfully Anabelle had inherited Ana's capacity for being able to feel the energy of something around her, and she had been building on it from the moment she entered the game. It was a surprise how long she had been in the game. Surprisingly, she had been in Sword Art Online from the day of the visit before. It had already been days, and Anabelle had the chance to build at least on her senses, and most with fighting some of the lesser monsters on earlier floors. Pairing Ana and Anabelle with their relying on their advanced senses over just their eyes, no matter how human a monster might look, even Anabelle's perfect vision was relentless on something that would attack her.
Ripping through the enemies around the town was easy, simple, and it was actually something which gave them plenty to talk about. Ana learned plenty about her daughter, and Anabelle learned a lot about how her mother lived her life. Anabelle had her opinions and she thought that even though her mother was doing what she loved in writing and programming on the off circumstances, she should have gone into the medical field with Ryra. Anabelle kept it to herself though, realizing how difficult it was to touch on the subject. After all, there were reasons Ana couldn't be a doctor. Whether it be her medical history, or anything regarding her past, even with her capacity for knowledge, most places in the world wouldn't put their trust in a doctor with high functioning social anxiety, being blind, not having a voice, among many other things. Even if some of those things might have been able to be dealt with if Ana had the ability to figure out how to solve some of her issues. She might have been able to cure her anxiety if she had invested her post high school education on learning the medical field. She might have been able to cure her vision. She wouldn't have needed to lose her voice. With such possibilities, of course Anabelle could figure out that her mother would have considered it. The problem was, a medical school wouldn't have taken on a student like her, no matter the case. Because she was just another disabled dependant.
Ana was depressed, letting Anabelle understand such heavy and terrible parts of her past. However, it was bringing them together. Anabelle could appreciate her mother more for the hardships she had overcome to be at the point she was at. Regardless of her medical conditions, so long as she wasn't faced with a situation which would trigger her anxiety, she could operate just fine. She could handle living just as much, if not, possibly better than other people.
Ana was only happy that Anabelle hadn't suffered the kind of past she had. That was all she could hope for, for any of her children. Mending the wounds of Asuna's past with her original family was something she would steadily over time work on, and some parts of that could be handled by her relationship with Kirizu.
Anabelle was more distressed to hear about what caused her mother to be blind. What caused her anxiety to become so bad. Those were very dark times in Ana's past. Anabelle didn't need to know. Not at her age, not ever. Her determination to know and to try and do something about it was what caused her to regret prying so far into her mother's life. Ana had a mostly happy life outside of the game. She had a very happy life inside of the game with her mother and the other wonderful people in the guild around them. That her mother didn't have that kind of happiness for so long...it was depressing. So Anabelle loosed arrows and distracted herself with killing the monsters around the town with her mother instead of focusing on the dark past her mother had experienced.
For Ana, her mind couldn't so easily be distracted, no matter how much she hated being a pessimist. Her mind floated around the memories of her dark past.
When Ana had been only five years of age, her first day at the school which was a year later than some children, and a year early for some others, she had been picked out. She had been a boy at that time, wearing formal boy's clothing which didn't suit her a bit. Her parents had picked them out and they had been decided that it was cute on her. Other kids didn't see it the same way as her parents had. She knew all along about her mindset being more that of a girl than a boy. She enjoyed being called cute. She enjoyed learning from her mother many things, and she had inherited much from her as far as personality and anxiety. Thankfully the anxiety hadn't continued to Anabelle. When she went to school for the first time, she had been excited to make some friends with other girls since the girls who grew up in the same neighbourhood were more masculine and uninterested in the feminine things that she had been.
As far as Ana's interests when she was young, she wanted to be in dance. Choir or other vocal practice. She wanted to do figure skating instead of hockey. She hated regular sports more than anything. Especially baseball since she had received one of her more memorable concussions from a bully who played it with her team back then. She in general disliked all physical contact sports, be it soccer, baseball, football, basketball, volleyball. She just disliked the violent and competitive games. However, because she wanted to be in some kind of extra curricular activity, her father pushed for her to do baseball since it was surprisingly one of the less expensive sports, and something he had more interest in supporting her in over soccer, hockey or other sports. He hadn't been much a sports person either, unless he was playing them.
Ana's first day of school, the event back then which lost her her vision, was at first a realization that the other girls her age she was at her school with, were spoiled brats and they were hanging onto the whole stupid germs thing back at the time. Kids were like that. Cruel in their innocence. That led to Ana taking a seat on a swing, where some older kids of the school, six years older than her to be more precise, had made their hangout. Those older kids didn't even give Ana a chance to move, shoving her off of the swing. She landed face first in the sand of the large sandbox where most of the children were before the first bell signalling classes rang. Those older kids, thinking it was funny to shove her around and shove her into the sand, getting her formal boy clothes messed up and vent whatever negative feelings they had on her, led to one of those older boys taking it too far. He had turned her over and punched her multiple times, and as a teacher had finally been informed of the bullies' actions, he grabbed both his hands full of dirt and rubbed them directly into her eye sockets. Some of the sand was never fully removed, and eventually her body dissolved it, but not before some sand had grazed and damaged the nerves connecting her eyes to her brain. That was the cause of her loss in vision. Such a thing, vision loss from nerve damage was something that still couldn't be cured medically. Not by neurosurgery, not by electromagnetic technology. There was nothing, no surgery, no cure.
Because of her experiences with other people in school, between her being blind, and having been made terrified of boys because of how consistently only they bullied, and bullied her prominently, she developed anxiety talking to anyone. A large contributing factor was the lack of her female classmates or other females in general, how anyone reacted to her. Because she had adapted quickly enough to act as if her vision were still fine. Eventually, she had to be moved schools because of the rough relations with other people. The same kind of environment continued until high school, where for the two years prior, she had begged and pleaded with her family and medical overseers to let her be a girl. In high school, with her new name, new appearance, and new constitution of herself, her anxiety slightly shifted into a better position. She was able to communicate with some other people. Some people were thrilled about someone so impressive and eye catching as her. She had never thought to cover her eyes, even though she knew they looked as blind as they were. Because of her being blind, she had a lot of attention. Especially with her capabilities of acting as if completely normal and completely capable of seeing.
In high school, she had taken up her hobby for archery. There, she had denied the option to be part of the main archery team, and people were only more convinced that she had been lying and she wore some kind of disfiguring contact lenses to make her seem blind, because of her ability with archery. She didn't aim to be the best in the school, but she had earned that place either way. Because of her advanced perception. Because of her perception, sometimes it worked even better than most people operated with their vision intact.
The bullying had picked up again in high school after she had joined the archery club. During that time, one person had been kind to her. Another person who had been bullied. They had become very close, and eventually it arrived at the point that they were in a relationship. It was Ana's first. However...the relationship didn't last long. The night that created Anabelle's opportunity to start growing in her, he had shown his true self. Many scars on her body were from bullying, but the most were from him. The most in number, and the most hideous in figure. Her other scars had been rather tame in comparison.
After that, everyone at school had become distant. Between her having become pregnant, and the other parent of Anabelle growing in her being locked up in juvenile prison, everybody decided to stay away from her. Well, all except for Ryra. Ryra hadn't really been present much in Ana's life until after the tragedy with the person who gave her Anabelle. Ryra had been a huge support through Ana's pregnancy, and had even been there for her when Anabelle was born. Ryra had kept Ana sane, in a sense. By giving her a strong anchor to hold her from drifting away into her depression from everything in her life piling up.
Her mother had always been as supportive as she could be, but her father had been a traditional type in regard to the area, and he hadn't been supportive of her becoming a girl. He reinforced his view on that when Ana had returned home pregnant after a test with a doctor. She had tried hiding it from her family, but she needed support if she were going to give birth to her baby. In the end, Anabelle was born, and because of all of the reasons which had piled up, Anabelle was put up for adoption. Everything led to her now being inside of Sword Art Online with her, nine years and seven months after she had lost her daughter.
Anabelle did her best to distract herself from the sadness she felt, hearing about her mother's horrible past. She tried her best to think about how happy she was that she didn't end up with her grandparents if her grandfather had been so denying of her mother. She hoped to be strong enough to tell him how terrible and wrong he had been some day in the future, but she also hoped that she could just live a good and happy life with her mother. The latter option was much better. Less negativity would always be better, and confronting her grandfather over something which was so far in the past was only negative.
As she thought about things to distract her, she could hear footsteps crunching through the snow. Heavy footsteps far larger and heavier than the other monsters in the area. Those footsteps signalled Ana even before Anabelle. When Ana was able to tell that it wasn't an average roaming area boss of the floor or the area's boss around the town, she was able to figure out rather easily that it was the event monster which the rest of the party had been searching for. Ana hadn't wanted to bring Anabelle into any monster fight or include her in such a dangerous battle as an event boss, but she realized it was likely a good chance to pick up her mood after bringing it down in letting her know about her past.
Because of this, Ana sent a request to tie her and Anabelle's party with the rest of the guild, and she messaged the others that she was going to kill it, and they were only added to the party for the present distribution. Before Ana started the attack on the monster, she checked how the leader boards were and how Beta was doing. Surprisingly, Ana was at the top of the individual boards again. Anabelle was catching up, though hadn't reached the top twenty at the point. Meanwhile, everyone else in Beta were a fair chunk behind Ana's collection. Ana sighed and closed the ranking, taking a step forward and nodding to Anabelle.
"We're going to fight it?!"
Anabelle was beyond excited to see her mother prepare for fighting the monster. She would get to see how strong her mother really was, and she was practically bouncing on the spot when Ana smiled in return to the question. That smile turned from happy, to confident as she turned back toward the monster. At that moment, Anabelle saw it, the evidence of her mother's strength after all she had went through in her past. Every reason to be proud of her mother. Anabelle readied her bow, and Ana readied her sword, dashing forward without the use of sonic leap.
Through the calm falling snow and the light snow banks, Ana sprinted, and after Anabelle fired an attention drawing arrow to the monster, it rushed toward Ana's charge. Before Ana entered range to start picking up the attention of other nearby monsters, she met with the giant Christmas thief and she slammed the face of her sword against Anabelle's arrow which hadn't faded after being shot. The damage and effect of the kind of attacks paired together created a prolonged stun on the monster. The stun gave Ana plenty of opportunity to let loose her dancing that she never had a lesson for. Following to the beat of songs she used to sing alone. Anabelle would contribute from her safe distance, finding good opportunities to add an arrow into the damage the monster took, and in what felt no time at all, the giant fell. Anabelle was beyond excited and she was near ready to run up to her mother before she noticed that there was possibility of crossing into other monster aggro range. The two of them killed off enemies blocking the way between them, and joined up after the battle was over, and Ana pet Anabelle's head proudly.
"You had a lot of really good shots there. I'm so proud of you!"
"Mama's fighting is amazing!"
The two laughed softly, and surprisingly delayed, the event notification verbally sounded through the floor, saying that the Christmas thief had been killed. The other group were disappointed they hadn't found and killed it themselves, but in the end, everyone in the guild received the benefits. Anabelle had also shot up in ranking from the even distribution of the presents. From around the mid twenty and thirty ranks, up to rank fourteen. The places between fourteen and the places in the top ten that the rest of Beta held, were the greyed out names of people from Laughing Coffin who were trapped in the prisons. So essentially, Beta held all the top ranks.
Floods of messages hit the members of Beta, asking how their numbers shot up so much so quickly. Apparently the people of Fuurinkazan and the Midnight Black Cats were the competitive types who were trying to compete. There were others sending them questions about it, but the most recognized were people from those groups. With the notice that there had been an event monster with the bonus on the floor, people were upset. Of course they would be. With that kind of advantage, nobody else would have a chance of obtaining anything other than the follow ups in the guild rewards of the event.
Because there was a lot of distaste for Beta being so far in the lead with the present collection, they opened the gate to the seventh floor, but only at the end of the day, after they found the dungeon on the seventh floor. The next day, they would advance again to the eighth floor if they again didn't have additional monsters in the way.
The news of sub events appearing with such bonuses made a lot of people migrate up to the seventh floor. For those who weren't prepared for the jump in strength of the enemies, it only made them more depressed that they couldn't compete. For those who could, they were disappointed that there was still no way to catch up to Beta if they only continued to monopolize the next floor after clearing through.
Because of the balance of how the people were reacting to the balance within the event, this dragged on until only a few days before Christmas, where Beta had reached floor ten, and had to let others follow them up to the tenth floor, because they had finally again reached a boss with additional monsters, and a raid party would need to be formed again. Other sub events had happened along the way, and Beta only stayed further and further in the lead.
The tenth floor...after it had been reached, there were many reasons to slow down.